The Great Escape: Winner of the Libris Award Non-Fiction Book of the Year!

The Great Escape, the bestselling history title from acclaimed broadcaster, military historian, and author Ted Barris, was honoured at this week's Libris Award ceremony, sharing the award for Best Non-Fiction Title with Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. Other shortlisted titles included Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life by James Daschuk, Orr: My Story by Bobby Orr, and A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett.

“Through nearly 40 years as a professional writer and 17 books, I have received applause and praise from the Canadians whose lives and accomplishments I've tried to capture in print. Thanks to this Libris Award, now the acclaim comes to the word-pictures I've created, their accuracy and their style. I am humbled and proud at the same time,” says Barris, whose book unearths the true — and decidedly Canadian — story of the iconic 1944 German POW camp escape attempt made famous by the 1963 Steve McQueen film.

The Great Escape has been on bestseller lists across the country since its publication last October. Fuelling this success have been the author’s tireless and enthusiastic promotional efforts. The book will be released in paperback later this year.

“We’re all elated for Ted,” says Dundurn’s publisher and president Kirk Howard. “The Great Escape is not only a captivating read, but it’s an important one as well. We hope this award helps give it the staying power it deserves, and aids in preserving this fascinating Canadian story for future generations. ”

Barris is an accomplished author, journalist, and broadcaster. In addition to hosting stints on CBC Radio and regular contributions to the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and numerous national magazines, he is a professor of journalism at Toronto’s Centennial College. Barris’s other publications include the national bestsellers Victory at Vimy and Juno.

The Libris Awards are presented annually by the Retail Council of Canada. Winners and finalists are selected by members of the Canadian book industry. This year’s awards were presented last night in a ceremony hosted by author Terry Fallis at the Toronto Congress Centre.

Dundurn Press was founded in 1972 by Kirk Howard, who was at the time a community college instructor frustrated by a lack of books on Canadian history. The company, at first a small publisher of Canadian nonfiction, has expanded considerably. Dundurn acquired Thomas Allen Publishers in 2013, and today continues to publish more than one hundred books each year in many genres, including fiction, young adult, mysteries, business, and popular culture.

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Ted Barris is an award-winning author, journalist, and broadcaster. For more than forty years his writing has appeared in the national press, as well as in history, news, and arts magazines, and he has authored seventeen non-fiction books, including the national bestsellers Victory at Vimy, Juno, and The Great Escape. In 2014, The Great Escape received the national Libris Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award.

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